Thread Spool Ornaments
I bought a roll of colorful grosgrain ribbon imprinted with the Looney Tunes characters, and was casting around for a way to incorporate it into a tree ornament.
While rooting in my stash of odds and ends, I came across my collection of thread spools, which provided the perfect foundation for another Looney Tunes-inspired ornament. (You can find many variations of spool ornaments all over the web).
Since the spool itself was going to be mostly covered by the ribbon and braid, I decided to use up some of my plastic spools for the ornaments and save the wooden ones for another day.
I selected a black spool (there's a lot of black in the characters' coloring) and a metallic gold spool (I like a bit of dazzle on the tree). Then I cut a length of my Looney Tunes ribbon for each ornament -- as luck would have it, five of the characters' faces just fit around the spool, with a minimum of overlap. (If you don't have a similar ribbon, you could use a paper print or some wrapping paper to cover the spool instead).
I spread the back of the ribbon with tacky glue and wrapped it around my spool, pressing it in place with my fingers until the glue grabbed. Then I set it aside to dry for a couple of hours. The ribbon is a bit narrower than the height of the spools, so there was a small gap where the spool showed above and below the Looney Tunes ribbon. To fill the gap, I selected some narrow sparkly braid in red, and cut two lengths for each ornament. I spread these with tacky glue and wrapped them around the spool just above and below the printed ribbon, pressing each firmly in place, and let the glue dry for about an hour.
Once the glue was set on the braid, it was time to assemble the ornament components. I cut a length of 18-gauge craft wire and made a small loop in one end using my round-nose pliers. Then I threaded on a red crystal-cut bead, a small brass washer, a shiny flat button, the decorated spool, a second shiny flat button, another brass washer, and a second red bead. I cut the wire about 3/8" from the last bead and made a second loop with the round-nose pliers.
To finish the ornament, I added a small beaded component to the top and some beaded dangles to the bottom of the ornament.
To make the beaded unit for the top, I made a loop in a short piece of 18-gauge craft wire, then strung on three or four beads. I cut the end of the wire about 3/8" long and made a second loop, which I attached to the loop at the top of the spool component.
To make the dangles appended to the bottom of the spool I used head pins and strung on beads in colors to match the colours on the ornament (the one I made for the black spool includes some black beads in among the colors). I made three dangles for each ornament, varying the length slightly, then used a jump ring to attach the dangles to the bottom loop of the ornament.
I think these would look really nice made from recycled Christmas cards instead of the grosgrain ribbon -- just cut a piece of the card the right height for your spool and in a length that will wrap nicely around it. I may have to go back to the stash and dig out some more spools for other ornaments.